The MBR Beginning Reading Program is a reading program for preschool and kindergarten students. Its key feature is its use of sign language. It's interesting that as early as the mid 1800's educators recognized that sign language helped hearing siblings of deaf students learn to read. Unfortunately these observations were not pursued when signing went out of favor and deaf students were taught lip reading. However with the renewed interest in signing in the second half of the 20th century a number of educators "rediscovered" how signing helps students learn to read as indicated in the following Research Report.

The MBR program consists of 100 lessons divided into three units. The objectives of Unit I are phonemic awareness, letter names, sight words and the reading of simple sentences and stories. The iconic nature of signing - the fact that the signs illustrate the words they represent - plays a key role in helping students learn the sight words they need to "get them reading". The objective of Unit II is the sounds of the letters. What makes the letter sounds more meaningful to the students is that they can relate them to the words they have learned to read in Unit I. Again signing helps - this time with the use of the finger alphabet. And finally the objective of Unit III is the blending of letter sounds in the reading and writing of word families. Finger spelling again plays a key role because it helps the students sound out the words as they finger spell the letters. Note that during the teaching of Units I and II you should include lessons on penmanship and during all of Kindergarten you should, of course, be introducing children's literature.

It's important to note that the MBR program has not only been used successfully with Preschool and Kindergarten students but also First and Second Graders who need help getting started as well as Special Education students. It's also important to note that this program can and has been used successfully by parents. The following three tables provide links to the Lessons Plans. Note that Unit I makes use of a number of pictures and common objects. For a complete list see the List of Materials. Also note that the worksheets are in pdf form and so you will need Acrobat Reader to obtain them. Most browsers already have Acrobat Reader but if yours doesn't you can obtain it free from Adobe.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS - I would very much like to thank all those who have helped with the development of the MBR reading program including Ruth Nishida from Brooklyn Avenue School in East Los Angeles, Caroline Gonzales from Perez School in East Los Angeles and Karen Baker from Cal Poly Pomona. I would also like to thank Kenneth Yim and Charles Eloriaga from the Art Department at Cal Poly Pomona for drawing the illustrations.